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Listening to city council debate the budget Tuesday, you’d never know their job was to represent the interests of taxpayers — the folks who pay their salaries and finance the city’s $1-billion operation.

Not once did I hear a city councillor raise the issue during budget deliberations about how taxpayers will be expected to afford a third straight year of property tax increases, soaring sewer and water rates, or 22 more years of planned property tax hikes.

Yes, that’s right. The city’s solution to fixing our crumbling infrastructure is to raise taxes each year for the next 22 years.

Finance chairman Coun. Russ Wyatt even pointed that out at the end of the budget debate, waiving a copy of the budget in the air and reminding council gleefully of the long-term tax hike plan. He seemed quite proud of it.

Under the city’s long-term plan, city hall would raise our property taxes by at least 1% a year for the next nine years. Following that, they would increase the frontage levy portion of property taxes by $1-per-foot each year for the following 13 years. That would bring the frontage levy fee to $16.75 per foot from the current $3.75 per foot. That’s more than a fourfold increase. All that money would go into a road reserve fund to be spent on crumbling streets, back lanes and sidewalks and on interest for a $25-million loan, which would also go into road repair.

And that’s the minimum tax increase. The city could still raise taxes above 1%, as they did this year with a 3.87% hike.

“Nobody likes to raise property taxes,” said Wyatt.

Actually, I think Wyatt and other councillors who voted for the operating budget do like increasing property taxes. They seem to like raising taxes, because they did so despite the many alternatives they had at their disposal to cut wasteful and discretionary spending.

They chose tax hikes over fiscal austerity.

Meanwhile, how will property owners — some of whom struggle on fixed incomes — pay for these increases?

That didn’t come up. Wyatt and friends don’t care about that part of the equation. Taxpayers’ ability to pay for soaring tax rates isn’t part of city council’s vocabulary.

They did pay lip service to issues of poverty Tuesday. But then they turned around and screwed every taxpayer with a tax increase, even low-income property owners.

As long as councillors get their pay raises and massive increases to their personal slush funds — which they approved in full Tuesday — they couldn’t give a rat’s rear-end about taxpayers’ ability to pay.

Instead, those who approved the budget — including Mayor Sam Katz — spent most of their time congratulating each other and their senior bureaucrats who put this tax-grab budget together. It was disgusting.

The only councillor who made an impassioned plea not to raise property taxes was Coun. Paula Havixbeck.

There were no discussions on how to control the city’s growing bureaucratic costs. Salaries and benefits at city hall skyrocketed 23% from 2007 to 2011 to $664 million, more than three times the rate of inflation. Were there any discussions on that or on how to control those costs in the future? Nope.

The city’s Organizational Support Services — which includes human resources, communications, financial management — saw their budget rise to $37 million this year, up from $33.8 million just two years ago. Any discussions there on where bureaucratic savings could be had? Not a peep.

I’m not even convinced some of these councillors even look at those figures. They’re too lazy.

Disgusting display as city council congratulates itself for raising taxes

Listening to city council debate the budget Tuesday, you’d never know their job was to represent the interests of taxpayers — the folks who pay their salaries and finance the city’s $1-billion operation.

Not once did I hear a city councillor raise the issue during budget deliberations about how taxpayers will be expected to afford a third straight year of property tax increases, soaring sewer and water rates, or 22 more years of planned property tax hikes.

Yes, that’s right. The city’s solution to fixing our crumbling infrastructure is to raise taxes each year for the next 22 years.

Finance chairman Coun. Russ Wyatt even pointed that out at the end of the budget debate, waiving a copy of the budget in the air and reminding council gleefully of the long-term tax hike plan. He seemed quite proud of it.

Under the city’s long-term plan, city hall would raise our property taxes by at least 1% a year for the next nine years.